Mark St. Pierre, the onetime New Orleans City Hall technology vendor who paid for former Mayor Ray Nagin's family to travel to Hawaii and Jamaica, has been moved from a federal prison in Texas to the St. Charles Parish jail while he tries to work out a deal to reduce his 17-year prison term by helping the feds build a case against the former mayor. St. Pierre's attorney, Deborah Pearce, said she requested that her client be moved as close to New Orleans as possible while his appeal is pending. He has been incarcerated locally since April.

Eliot Kamenitz, Times-Picayune archiveMark St. Pierre has been moved from a federal prison in Texas to the St. Charles Parish jail while he tries to work out a deal to reduce his 17-year prison term by helping the feds build a case against the former Mayor Ray Nagin.

Federal court records show St. Pierre's appeal has been on hold since May based on a motion by Pearce that says the two sides are trying "to settle this matter in its entirety," suggesting talks are ongoing. Generally, appeals cannot proceed during possible plea discussions because the two processes are inherently contradictory.

It's not clear how big a player St. Pierre might be in the developing case against Nagin, which centers around gifts and cash the mayor allegedly took from city vendors.

Presumably, St. Pierre would help the feds make a case that Nagin knew that St. Pierre was underwriting his family vacations and providing other perks free of charge, such as landscaping. Nagin has previously said he thought his benefactor was Greg Meffert, who was his chief technology officer at the time.

Although the distinction might seem slight, it would weaken the mayor's position dramatically if federal authorities could show Nagin took valuable gifts from a vendor with city contracts totaling millions of dollars as opposed to a subordinate. It would also throw into high relief the mayor's decision to sign an executive order that exempted technology contracts from the city's usual competitive-bidding rules, a move that clearly benefited St. Pierre.

But St. Pierre would have huge drawbacks as a witness were he to testify. Defense lawyers would jump at the chance to highlight the contradiction between St. Pierre's new testimony and his long-running insistence that he did nothing wrong, an insistence he carried on during a memorable turn on the witness stand during his own trial. It wouldn't be hard to plant the seed in the jury's mind that, having played out his hand and lost, St. Pierre was willing to say anything to get a few years trimmed off prison term.

"He's got lots of baggage," said veteran defense lawyer Eades Hogue, a former federal prosecutor. "He'd be subject to impeachment. That 17-1/2 year sentence ... it all depends how he handles the cross-examination."

Dane Ciolino, a professor at Loyola Law School, agreed.

"Sure, he's damaged goods," Ciolino said. "Any cooperating witness who has a plea deal is impeachable for his self-interest." It's worse when the witness is testifying for the government after having been convicted at trial, Ciolino said.

Still, he added, "if he has any goods on Mr. Nagin, he has value to the government. Less than if he had cooperated sooner. But value nonetheless."

Meffert and businessman Frank Fradella, who are the other presumed major witnesses in a case against Nagin -- who has not been charged -- have also both pleaded guilty to felonies. Both both did so before going to trial.

Meffert has been cooperating with the feds since 2010, when he admitted that he took about $860,000 in bribes from St. Pierre in exchange for steering city work his way. His plea deal required him to testify against St. Pierre. In exchange, his prison time was capped at a maximum of eight years. His sentencing date was recently pushed back until March 21.

At this point, Fradella would seem to be a much more important witness than either Meffert or St. Pierre, given the scale of his admissions.

Fradella in June pleaded guilty to paying Nagin -- identified in court documents as "Public Official A" -- $50,000 in bribes while the mayor was in office. He also confessed to providing the Nagin family's countertop business with "numerous truckloads" of granite and providing the mayor with a $10,000 monthly stipend after he left City Hall.

Nagin, who was recently ordered to turn over documents to the grand jury for at least the second time, has professed his innocence but otherwise said little about the federal investigation. His attorney, Robert Jenkins, told WDSU-TV last week that "the mayor has always cooperated fully" and will continue to do so. Jenkins also said Nagin had gotten an extension of time to respond to the recent grand-jury subpoena.

Jenkins did not return numerous phone messages.

Gordon Russell can be reached at grussell@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3347.